The kings pay tribute to the memory of the Spanish Republicans deported in Mauthausen | Spain

The image of this Sunday in Mauthausen was powerful: The kings of Spain, for the first time and between a sea of ​​flags, also from Republican Spain, paying tribute to the Spanish Republicans who died, and some survived, in this field of concentration released 80 years ago.

It is an image, at the same timewhich is uncomfortable for some relatives of those who were persecuted or abandoned to their fate then by Franco’s Spain; uncomfortable for those who keep the flame of the Republic alive and in some cases they said that the gesture of the monarchy was late.

The image, in short, affects the policies on memory and history, and underlines a message that, not obviously, or assumed throughout the decades, is less urgent in times of promotion of the extreme right and revisionism: every country has its heroes and the Republicans of Mauthausen and other fields in Austria are already a central part of the identity and values ​​of the Spain of Spain of Spain.

« Long live the Republic! » Said someone, while Felipe VI, the main institutional participant in the ceremony, made a solemn parade between the barracks a few meters away, along with Queen Letizia and the Austrian President, Alexander Van Der Bellen. They headed the four survivors parade, the authentic protagonists of the day.

A few minutes before, The Kings had talked with Juan Manuel Calvo and Concha DíazPresident and Vice President of the Association in Memory of the amical deportees of Mauthausen. They also greeted Dolors Font, daughter of Josep Pont, republican soldier born in 1903, hospitalized at the end of the Civil War in the French countryside of Agde and deported to Mauthausen and the neighbor Gustan in 1941, where he died on November 7 of the same year.

After the conversation with the king, Calvo explained: « For us it was important that, for the first time, the head of state visited Mauthausen. He has shown us that he knows perfectly what the deportation of the Republicans was. »

The president of the AMICAL added: “to come here is a recognition that here were the victims of deportation, but what is missing is the institutional declaration, by the State – I do not know if it corresponds to the Royal House or the Government – of the responsibility of the Spanish State, which has continuity, in short, with the Francoist state, because the states do not disappear. Therefore, the State must apologize and assume the responsibility for the complicity that had between the Government between the Government. Pétain government (the leader of the France collaborativeist with the Nazis) and the Nazi regime ”.

Queen Letizia had in her hand a handkerchief with the « S » of « Spanier » (Spanish) in the blue triangle that just given those responsible for the amical of Mauthausen. The triangle with the S the symbol that identified the « Rotpanier », « Red Spaniards » in the field, as the Spanish Republicans called the Nazi propaganda.

« VISCA The Republic! ”Said someone in Catalan at another time of the parade, while the kings passed. »VISCA! ”, They replied to Chorus some young people. Someone was heard saying: » A little respect, please!  »

Then, Felipe VI deposit a crown of flowers in the cenotapio located in the center of the call Appellatzwhere the prisoners had to form for the daily count. In Cenotaph you read in Latin: « Mortuorum raffle disables  » – « It serves as a lesson to the living the fate of the dead » -. At the end of the act in the Appellatz With music, speeches and testimonies, the monarch plans to make floral offerings to the old plaque in memory of the republicans dead in this field, and another in the monument to the Spaniards, flanked by paths, the constitutional and the Republican.

It is not the first time, nor the second, that the kings of Spain pay tribute to the Spanish Republicans, double defeated in the Civil War and then, in their French exile, deported to the Nazis fields. Already in 1978, during a visit by Juan Carlos I and Sofia to Vienna, some emissaries from the Royal House moved to Mauthausen to inaugurate the plaque that said: « Spain to their children fallen in Mauthausen. »

The recognition of Felipe VI, on the throne since 2014, to Republican Spain have been numerous over the years, since the soldiers of La Nine, which in August 1944 released Paris into exile in Mexico. In 2020 the king participated in the ceremony of the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz and last January, in the 80th anniversary. But I had never attended Mauthausen in person, « the field that swallowed more Spanish Republicans, » as Montserrat Roig wrote in his pioneer in his pioneer Els Catalans Als Camps Nazisa mortuary temple in the idyllic landscape of green and wooded hills in Valle del Danube, and an immense emptiness for time in the memory of Spain, today a central space, a true Spanish monument. There were more than 7,000 who passed through this field between 1941 and 1945 and other adjacent ones, of which about 5,000 died (in total, 190,000 deportees passed through Mauthausen and 90,000 died from illnesses, torture, exhaustion, gas, trying to evade or in medical experiments).

Mauthausen also attended this Sunday the Spanish prosecutor of human rights and democratic memory and former minister of justice and former general Dolores Delgado, between a large delegation of government representatives and the State. Delgado explained details about the opening of an investigation for crimes of homicide, murder, illegal detention and forced disappearances in a context of crimes against humanity against the Spanish population that, after fleeing from Franco, ended in the fields of Nazi Germany. « Was there collusion? » He asked, in statements to the press. « Was there a possibility to avoid these deaths? Could they have returned to Spain? They could have stayed in French prisoners who had deplorable conditions, but were not dedicated to death? » He added.

The 80th anniversary of the release of Mauthausen culminates a sequence of commemorations of the end of World War II, marked by the disappearance of the survivors. There are few left. The last Spanish Republicans who survived the fields of Nazis death died five years ago. His voice resonates in the books or in the texts and poems that have been read between the weekend in Mauthausen and Gustan, the memorial in the crematory oven of this field where most Spaniards died.

« Everything is cold in the environment of the yellow garden / cold that rises from the earth / blue cold that falls, between the red clouds / cold that comes from the blood clots … The sunflowers have trembled so much silence. » They were the verses of Joaquim Amat Piniella (1913.1974), Manresano Survivor of Buchenwald and author of the novel Kl Reich, who on Saturday, next to the baked of Taen, the professor of History Pep Castilla to a teenagers of Manresa, a generation for the memory to move away: they will no longer be able to learn from the story for those who lived it: they will learn from the books, the movies, the movies.